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My first session of Age of Ashes was last Sunday. And it was...
A frustrating mess.
But! That was because I decided to switch to Fantasy Grounds instead of MapTool. A decision that I do not at all regret. I did, however, severely underestimate how unfamiliar with the new interface I was, which resulted in a lot of session time spent trying to figure out how to do something I thought I knew how to do but sadly didn't.
I also made the huge, huge mistake of letting Fantasy Grounds roll initiative for the party; this was again not a problem with Fantasy Grounds. Rather, it was a decision that reduced my player's feelings of agency in an unacceptable way, especially combined with secret rolls. My players like secret rolls and are fully supportive of the concept, but having dice taken away from them also on initiative proved a bridge too far.
So I definitely messed some things up.
Despite that, it was actually fantastic! Initiative aside, my players are greatly enjoying the new system and the AP. Everyone got a chance to shine; the party sorcerer really enjoyed being able to just destroy a creature that was vulnerable to cold with Ray of Frost, and the half-orc cleric quite liked using Orc Ferocity to walk through a raging fire and survive damage in excess of his max hit points.
Unlike some reports I have heard here on the forums, having to choose one exploration tactic didn't ruffle any feathers; instead the party leapt on the chance to decide who was best suited to handle what roles.
Due to aforementioned technical issues we didn't get as far into the AP as I might have liked, but I'm definitely looking forward to diving back in next week.
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Hey buddy! Glad to see you are playing. I've missed your voice on the forum.
Speaking as someone who uses map tools and isn't familiar with fantasy grounds, can you tell me a little about FG and why you switched to it?
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Yeah, I guess I have been a bit slow on the forums lately. Just hasn't been as much to talk about since I've been prepping game but not running it. :)
As far as Fantasy Grounds, I'll be honest: The number one reason is that I am lazy. Prepping with Maptool takes a long time. I have to import the map, build the encounters, find artwork for the encounters, and only then do I get start making adjustments for my party.
Fantasy Grounds does all of the importing and encounter building for me and lets me get straight to the tweaking.
Plus, it is effectively a built-in SRD. I barely touched a rulebook all session because almost any rule I needed to look up could be referenced from Fantasy Grounds. Creatures have full stat blocks, you can click on traits to get descriptions of them, each skill lists the full rules for actions associated with that skill, etc.
Another thing I am a huge fan of is the party sheet. In one place I can see the entire party's skill bonuses, attributes, saves, etc. If I need to secretly roll a saving throw for the whole party, I type in the DC and click one button and it gives me a full list of who succeeded, failed, crit, etc.
The combat automation for monsters is awesome, too. Set which player the monster is targeting, choose an attack, and the program does all the math for you and says whether the monster hit, missed, etc. Roll damage and the player's HP is automatically adjusted.
The built-in condition tracking is also convenient, although it must be said kinda clunky. Great for quickly looking up what a condition does and decent for tracking duration, but struggles with "odd" conditions like diseases.
FG is also a godsend for tracking Bulk, in that it handles it completely automatically.
Fantasy Grounds has three major drawbacks compared to Maptool in my eyes, though.
Most obvious is that it isn't free. All of that prep work it does for you comes with a price tag - although if you are already buying products through Paizo, the prices are quite reasonable; usually about $10/book.
Second is vision. Fantasy Grounds only uses a basic masking layer for blocking player vision; there's no vision blocking layer and no line of sight calculations. You have to manually reveal areas of the map as players explore.
Third is the drawing tools. Not to put too fine a point on it, the FG tools for drawing on the map are so bad they might as well not exist. You can pencil in thin black lines and that's it; plus the drawing tool is laggy and at least for me didn't update reliably on client machines. I also missed the ruler function from MapTool; having to count distances square by square felt like a step backwards.
In the end I think the choice between MapTool and FG largely comes down to how much any of those is a deal breaker for you.
I also missed the ruler function from MapTool; having to count distances square by square felt like a step backwards.
Try holding down both mouse buttons and dragging.
The last time I tested it, Fantasy Grounds was not rolling player initiative properly. I have my players roll manually. Also, they have the option of several kinds of skill rolls for initiative (stealth and perception primarily), which can change from combat to combat.
Yeah, I guess I have been a bit slow on the forums lately. Just hasn't been as much to talk about since I've been prepping game but not running it. :)
As far as Fantasy Grounds, I'll be honest: The number one reason is that I am lazy. Prepping with Maptool takes a long time. I have to import the map, build the encounters, find artwork for the encounters, and only then do I get start making adjustments for my party.
Fantasy Grounds does all of the importing and encounter building for me and lets me get straight to the tweaking.
Plus, it is effectively a built-in SRD. I barely touched a rulebook all session because almost any rule I needed to look up could be referenced from Fantasy Grounds. Creatures have full stat blocks, you can click on traits to get descriptions of them, each skill lists the full rules for actions associated with that skill, etc.
Another thing I am a huge fan of is the party sheet. In one place I can see the entire party's skill bonuses, attributes, saves, etc. If I need to secretly roll a saving throw for the whole party, I type in the DC and click one button and it gives me a full list of who succeeded, failed, crit, etc.
The combat automation for monsters is awesome, too. Set which player the monster is targeting, choose an attack, and the program does all the math for you and says whether the monster hit, missed, etc. Roll damage and the player's HP is automatically adjusted.
The built-in condition tracking is also convenient, although it must be said kinda clunky. Great for quickly looking up what a condition does and decent for tracking duration, but struggles with "odd" conditions like diseases.
FG is also a godsend for tracking Bulk, in that it handles it completely automatically.
Fantasy Grounds has three major drawbacks compared to Maptool in my eyes, though.
Most obvious is that it isn't free. All of that prep work it does for you comes with a price tag - although if you are already buying products through Paizo, the prices are quite...
Well I don't bother with vision blocking layers in map tools anyway, so that's kind of a non-issue for me. I already manually reveal stuff.
So I take it you bought a pack for Age of Ashes with the encounters prebuilt? That sounds cool if I was running a PF2 AP, but I'm currently only running converted PF1 APs. I assume that's not a thing yet. So I'll maybe look into it if I ever run Age of Ashes myself.
Righteous madmax glad to hear you’re having fun.
What’s this fantasy grounds stuff? I’m very behind the times on ttrpg tech.
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Well I don't bother with vision blocking layers in map tools anyway, so that's kind of a non-issue for me. I already manually reveal stuff.
So I take it you bought a pack for Age of Ashes with the encounters prebuilt? That sounds cool if I was running a PF2 AP, but I'm currently only running converted PF1 APs. I assume that's not a thing yet. So I'll maybe look into it if I ever run Age of Ashes myself.
Definitely having the AP prebuilt is a huge huge selling point of FG for me.
I'm not sure if I'd use it or Maptool for a more homebrew campaign... Honestly, for 2e, I might use FG anyway. Having it track things like bulk and treasure distribution for me (and for my players) is incredibly handy, as is being able to rules-reference without having to tab over to AoN. And the party sheet, again, is just huge. Being able to see the whole party's character sheets and how they stack up against each other is really nice.
EDIT to add: Fantasy Grounds does have prebuilt packs for most of the 1e APs. They would be in 1e, of course, and I'm not sure how much work it would be to convert, but they do exist. In theory you could load the pack in combination with the 2e core rules module.
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Had my second session yesterday and it went a LOT better. Handing Initiative back to the party and being more comfortable with Fantasy Grounds made a huge difference.
Happily, my players are starting to find parts of the system that they particularly love. The party's fighter, who only originally picked up a shield because why not, is now a huge fan of PF2 shields after it saved her from ~18 damage in one fight. And the bard's Inspire Courage was a huge hit with the party also, especially after one memorable turn from the fighter where it turned a hit into a crit AND a miss into a hit, resulting in taking out 3/4s of a fairly dangerous enemy's health in one go.
And much as I sung the praises of the monster design in theory, it's even better to see in practice. Different fights are actually feeling very different. I particularly enjoyed a fight involving creatures that have a shield block-like mechanic where they hide in their shell; the party was struggling to do any real damage until the rogue had the brilliant idea of readying attacks for when they came out of their shell to attack. Great example of creature design actually forcing the party to change up their tactics.
Speaking of readied actions, the monk player was ecstatic when she realized that, being a single action, you can ready flurry of blows.
All in all, a great session, and everyone is really positive on 2e so far.